gearholder:

zedrin-maybe:

One thing that’s really foreign to me are novels written in present tense.

Like, most if not all the literature I grew up reading was in past tense, from 1984 to Animorphs.

All examples of YA writing I see nowadays however are written in present tense.

What caused the shift? When did the shift take place?

Immediacy. The present tense allows the author to convey a character’s change as it happens, not after the fact. In present tense, we are there with the narrator step by step as he changes, which leads to the story’s climax being both more immediate and intense.

Themeing and characterization. The fact that a character is facing the conflicts in “real time” makes for a situation in which the reader doesn’t have the benefit of knowing there is a future from which the story is being reminisced from. This removes the perceived safety of knowing the story has a favorable outcome and contributes to the immersion, twists are sudden and decisions seem harder.

Simplification. Past tense can employ most of the 12 tenses, while present only has 4 to deal with: the simple present, the present progressive, and a smattering of the simple past and the simple future. Using fewer tenses reduces our ability to convey the full complexity of time relationships, but a simple shift into the simple past when a flashback starts and then return to the present when it’s finished can solve this matter.

Basically, faster pacing and more intense settings… when used right that is, since some authors choose to include trivial events simply to keep the flow of time intact, as opposed to the past tense stories’ ability to skip those and favor the relevant points of the storyline.